


Imprints

by esbis



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/M, arthur is some sort of ghost (but not really) (explanations inside), precious children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 16:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2857235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esbis/pseuds/esbis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the fall and the winter, she would return to the old mansion, and the cobwebs would turn to silver string and the rooms warmer, livelier, and for those brief moments in time, the boy that lived on the walls would feel as if he were alive again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imprints

There were things that lived in the creaky old mansion at the edge of the woods; a mansion that looked more of ivy than peeling paint on its outside walls. But maybe the things weren't things, not really, no. One was -- was it a ghost, something like that? It wasn't a ghost, it didn't pass through walls and banged pots and pans and cause a racket to terrify the other at night, no (though it would, if it could). Rather, it spent its days on the walls, like a thin paper cut-out, and it looked like it was overlayed on them, and if it were a bit more transparent the patterns would show on its skin and the other would surely laugh at it.

And this other, it was nothing but a young, lonely, sweet girl with a laugh that echoed down narrow halls, bouncing off the wallpaper and the carpeted floors and filling the room with a happiness that it lacked.

But, ah, right -- she would like for the 'it' to be called a 'him', for i--he--looked male, and he never did object to that.

Once she asked his name, and that was the first day after she realized he was there (he was moving through the floors of the dusty library, curving around the fake pillars and twisting up the ceiling that day) and she had gotten lost again.

"That depends," he called from beside the chandelier, and his voice wasn't as rusty and hoarse as he expected. Of course he didn't spend his time reciting poems and stories aloud, no, that would be absurd and silly.

"On what?" she called back, and, having waited for an answer for more than a few seconds, added, "want me to give you one?"

He folded his arms, then unfolded them, and slithered down the pillar and onto the flat surface of the wall nearest to her, scrutinizing all the way. He had seen a glimpse of a carriage a few days back, and a few big trunks that still lay in the living room and the lowest floor. "I don't really care." 

Truthfully, he was predicting that they would go about their separate (but not really, not while under the same house) ways after this. So there was no need for a name, because she could only call him 'the boy on the wall' or 'it' or 'him' if she wanted to, but she didn't, and that was the problem.

"I'll give you one, then." 

Two minutes later, she bounced on her heels and proclaimed him as Arthur, and by now he was almost back at the ceiling (he had found himself inching away with every horrible suggestion) when he looked back down and raised an eyebrow. Well. He did say he didn't care. So he bounced his shoulder upwards in a shrug and a "very well, goodbye", and slunk out through the door with her goodbye echoing behind him.

"My name is Emily!" he heard, faintly, as he swept down to the ground floor to regain the quiet that he was used to.

That was the first time they met.

 

-

 

Arthur paces, until now, as he has done for the years without ceasing. He travels down corridors and skims over the torn wallpaper. Light, swift, trying not to linger, for her laugh has haunted him more than he has haunted this house, her laugh is imprinted in the very walls.

They echo, in his head, relentless, mocking, and he does not know if he should find comfort in it because his head is the only place he will ever hear it again.

Her face -- he knew it was bright, and warm, like the sun he has never felt since and the hands he could never hold, but it was blurry now. It was there, when he closed his eyes, fleeting, lacking details, but still her. It did not linger like her voice; no image of her in mirrors or pictures or windows. But always, always, faint in the back of his mind, and he does not know if he can find comfort in this either.

 

-

 

The months and years had passed by with them meeting each other in hallways and rooms, though they greeted each other every time; Arthur out of courtesy and the sake of manners, and her out of her gladness in seeing him -- it was nice to know there was always someone else other than her and the maid that visited twice a day to help prepare her food. They met often in the library, and Arthur would keep her company during meals (though grumbling about missing eating) and, if he was in the mood, led her through more and more rooms of the house, exploring day by day.

She was always away in the spring and the summer, when the flowers tried to grow in abundance in the gardens, and they would if they had been cared for, but now only colorful little weeds mostly grew, not that he cared.

When spring began, a carriage would pull up, signaled by the clattering and clopping of hooves on stone, and she would manage to only shoot him an apologetic smile before maids rushed in to prepare her for the trip back home, and he had to leave her room.

"My parents come back in the spring and the summer," she had told him once, when he didn't ask, but he remembered. 

So when she was gone again, he would go back with a little niggling feeling in his gut, for yes, it did get lonely, and as the plants grew, he found more and more poems to read, for there was a stack of them, unbound papers, that a wind blew into the floor, to the corners, in a disarray of words and emotions. But for that he was thankful, for he could never extend past the wall to touch another object. No one would be picking them up until Emily came back and the flowers were gone.

"But luckily, though, I don't leave during the fall and winter, because if I did you'd be even lonelier. Spring and summer is nice and happy, and I hope that keeps you happy while I'm gone, because we keep each other happy even when it's cold and rainy."

But in the meantime, the cobwebs turned to silver strings, the chandeliers no longer rusted metal; the wallpaper grew more vivid and the plants went back from a withered brown to green again, and though the same, same old on the outside, the inside had transformed into something that Arthur had missed for so long that he had already gotten over it.

It was amazing how one girl could change such a place.

And as the ivy grew thicker, and the leaves on the trees turned from green to orange and gold, and then back again, and the library doors were never closed now, the flowers turned into reminders and the falling leaves did too, acquaintance and familiarity grew to friendship, and the trust, and then, something entirely different, but more beautiful than before.

 

-

 

She was first to say it, on a day when it was raining, it was warm, but wouldn't be for long; the skies weren't very gray but the wind had cooled, and the leaves were as gold, but not as her hair. Arthur was but a faint image in her window, speckled by rain, and she had sank into the cushions of the window seat, the curtains pushed back for the both of them.

"I think I love you."

There she was again, surprising him with those things she did. She was bold and ridiculous and honest and earnest and he didn't know how to feel about that, and even in the glass she saw the pink burning his ears and down his cheeks and neck, and his eyes grew brighter than her smile.

So he nodded, slowly, unsure, but then the clouds rolled forward, darkening, and a heavy rumble of thunder rattled the window in its panes. He grimaced, moving smoothly to the wall opposite her, and listened as she laughed quietly, but sadly, and then curled the blankets around herself and together, they watched the rain and allowed the sound of it and the wind to consume them whole.

It was over an hour later when one single flash of lightning came, illuminating the room and turning creams and browns to a ghastly white that contrasted with the black of shadow, and when the light tore through her thin eyelids she jolted awake, breathing heavily, the blankets caught on her arms when she tried to throw them off.

He panicked, waving uselessly, unable to touch her, but the sight of him, green eyes alight in the glass, had calmed her, and she settled back down. 

"Thank you." It was so quiet that it was almost as if she had only mouthed it, but in all its earnest it was endearing, though he almost cocked an eyebrow at her in confusion, it dawned on him. With her travelling parents, her distant friends, this lonely, lonely solitude -- with the exception of him -- he knew.

"No, thank you," he murmured, and she peeked at him from over the covers. "Thank you," he said again, louder. She would know, and she did; it was evident when the corners of her eyes crinkled and she smiled. Not a grin, but a smile, and it was warm and simple and sweet, and Arthur knew.

He was going to be reckless, and honest, because she was infectious. "You know what?" The tell-tale beginning of another roll of thunder echoed in the distance. "I think I love you too."

And she cried out and laughed, exhilarated, breathlessly, and the clap of thunder that drowned it out shook and swelled in Arthur's chest as he grinned along.

 

-

 

He knows he was happy then, even though he hates thunder and he hates it now, he loathes it more than before because it rattles him down to his very core and he remembers that, and her words do not leave him. Her voice never will, though her image has, and he wants to twist his face is scorn. There are times he will not think of her, yes, many times, but it will resurface.

He does not go near that window seat anymore, not when lighting flashes on the floor and the rain pelts through one broken pane, not even when it is merely sunlight that seeps through the glass.

He claims it is because the window seat (and the blanket, unfixed when she had hurried out on her last day) is soggy and dank and the smell hangs in the room.

He isn't wrong, and he isn't right, not really, no.

**Author's Note:**

> The best I can say to describe Arthur -- imagine a moving projection on the wall. Twisting up pillars and sliding across walls, flat and transparent (or, imagine that trippy dream in The Prince of Egypt when Moses falls asleep after singing All I Ever Wanted)


End file.
